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Warning: This book opens with a scene that may be offensive to some readers. It is, however, important to the meaning of the card and the plot.

Susan Davies is about to graduate. Having been raised in a small farmer's community, she's led a sheltered life, especially so because of overprotective parents. Defying her parents one evening, she dresses in sexy clothing. On the way home, she accepts a ride from a stranger, again forgetting her parents' warnings. Susan deals with the consequences by making wrong decisions and right decisions, but they cause her to grow up in a hurry. Michael, a prominent figure in the medical world, has gone through a disastrous marriage. It has devastated him and goes on a drinking spree. When he sees a prostitute, he picks her up and takes her. However, to his sobering consternation, the woman is a virgin. After he's driven the woman back to town, he goes home and decides he wants to make right what he did wrong. But how? Michael's and Susan's lives become intertwined in a story that deals with love, pain, sexuality, forming a union, acknowledging kinship, establishing bonds and intimacy, making decisions, struggling with temptation and the choice between right and wrong.